I first ran into this about supplying limestone for your hens, particularly small and light boned birds like Araucanas, Minorcas and Leghorns, in an old poultry volume from 1858 where an English book was discussing the differences between English and French methods.
Like most gardeners I know of limestone for vegetables and grass of course not tomatoes or roses. Good also for your compost pile where if it gets too acidic the worms will die. This was a new take, that the limestone was actually good for the general chickens health. THe French historically, I do not know what they do now, applied lime on the top bedding of the coop. and these authors , Mr Walter Dickson and Mrs. Jane Loudon (her of Loudon's Natural History Magazine), noted that the birds seemed fine with no problems whatsoever.
The two authors also noted that the French made a bin of sand for the birds to feather dust during inclement weather. I do not have that bin of sand, though I am thinking of adding it in this year. Instead I let them out daily but during the winter they are depressed about the lack of feather dusting opportunities. That was noticeable last year during the bitter cold.
Take this little comment up about 150 years and in the book Poultry Genetics, , Breeding, and Biotechnology {edited by W. M. Muir, S. E. Aggrey, published in 2003 by CABI Publishing, CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon UK / CABI Publishing Cambridge MA} these authors looked at adding limestone not to just the coop but the whole area that the chickens visit because of the untimely deaths of Leghorn birds because of osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis occurs with the sexual maturation of the hen, as the oestrogen switches from bone formation to egg. Osteoporotic hens show evidence of widespread loss of actual bone, not just in the legs but throughout the skeleton and actually peaks at moult. It seems that moulting not only causes a loss of feathers but also a great loss of bone, and successive moults (chickens like all fowl moult yearly) just increase the loss until eventual their bones and skeletal systems are paper thin.
The study did bone density tests and saw no difference in the cancellate (bone) area but a remarkable difference in the building of medullary tissues in the bones (i.e. bone marrow) in the birds which in turn helped their overall bone health. They also recommended adding the limestone to the oyster shell, to make it more appetizing. They were happy with their research as it was "consistent" that osteoporosis in hens was not a genetic issue but nutritional and could easily be rectified without the attendant loss in the flock.
We saw proof of that study ourselves last winter, during the fortnight Polar Vortex time, when we lost a (Rhode Island White) RIW hen from the frost. During the autopsy we saw that she was not only egg bound, but that the egg itself was internally frozen and that her bones cracked, or actually bent, with just normal force. It was horrifying actually and since my Rhodies are my main egg layers very upsetting. As I have about 10 of them, I have been very worried about a repeat this winter, if the Farmer's Almanack "wicked winter" is to be believed [so far for September its been hit and miss].
This particular RIW, like the study confirmed, had just finished her second moult. The Black Stars, RIRs, RIWs, & Sussex are our earliest purchases as I originally only intended only having Sussex & Brahmas for show {the Brahmas} have since been sold. So the effect on the moult did not take as long as what the study found with the Leghorns, and perhaps she was unique as no other RIW had the same problem.
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